[Article] Voynich Article in The Atlantic

[ReneZ]

The primary sources for the article appear to be interviews with Lisa Davis and Claire Bowern

You are guessing, and you are guessing wrong. I know of at least five people who have been involved, and there were probably more.

For instance the article states "The mix of word lengths and the ratio of unique words to total words were similarly language-like." The contrary is true. The word length distribution matches almost perfectly a binomial distribution and is therefore not language like

This suggests that there should exist a good test for what is language-lilke and what is not. Well I don't think so.
Stolfi did not write that the word length distribution is not language like, and anyway, Stolfi is not a linguist. Neither am I for that matter.

I can't decide for myself to what extent the text is language-like, but at first sight it is very language like, while in important details it is less so. Saying that it is not language-like would be more incorrect in my opinion.

Torsten: much of your criticism is justified, but well, this is an article in the Atlantic, not a scientific review. We can't expect the author to judge on things we ourselves can't even agree on.

Interestingly, to me this is both right and wrong at the same time. The Atlantic approached this article in a very serious way, completely unlike any journalists' article I have ever witnessed. (Certainly infinitely better than whatever Romance journal published Cheshire's theories).
I agree that some things really cannot be judged - it is clear from Koen's recent presentation on Voynich Day 2024.

However, should 'we' be the reference?
I struggle to imagine who is 'we' when talking about the Voynich Ninja. All members combined?